2

Identifying your
local nature spirits

Nature spirits exist everywhere in the world. We can work with spirits from any lands who offer the powers we need, regardless of where we are living.

The spirits that best assist us magically and with whom we will be most instantly in tune are those indigenous to the region in which we currently reside. This is because we can tune in directly to their energies. We also have natural kinship with fey beings from our root culture through our family ancestry. Furthermore, if you live in an area where many people from the same country have resettled, you will also feel the influences of the faeries from their original homelands. For example, in Australia and the American continent, many fey people came with the settlers from Eastern and Western Europe, the Baltic, Scandinavia, and Asia and have sometimes made an uneasy truce with the original nature being inhabitants.

Too often, we dismiss the local fey in favour of the exotic. We know it is best health-wise to eat local produce in season and indeed to offer this to your local nature spirits who will take the essence and share the rest with the wild animals. So too, a ritual in situ using local herbs, seeds, and plants will fill your nature spirit ceremonies with a rootedness the exotic fey magick sometimes lacks, especially if you are casting a water or air spirit spell.

Try the following two nature spirit seed rituals rather than take my word. Though the rituals will work with any dried seeds, it is even more effective with ones produced close to home.

A Seed Transformation
Rite when Life Is Too Much

This rite helps when people or situations are very difficult and you can do no more to appease them.

• Take a dish of seeds to your garden or your nearest open space. Hold your dish upward to the sky and say, “Spirits of this land, I ask you to relieve me of this burden, worry, or distress.”
• Name your burdens in as much or little detail as you wish. If you speak aloud, the words will stir the energies and rebound as positive power to free you from the restrictions weighing you down.
• Now hold the dish downward over the earth close to a tree, bush, or over a patch of growing flowers or greenery and say, “You Spirits of this land, I have done my best. I leave all in your hands.”
• Scatter your seeds to grow, lie fallow, or wither.

Bird Spirit Seed Wishes for Peace

Birds are traditional messengers that carry wishes to the cosmos. They are close companions of air spirits and the bird’s form is often taken by air spirits. What is more, birds and animals have acted as omens for nature spirit messages for thousands of years. Wild birds confirm decisions regarding your worries by appearing in an unexpected location or coming unusually close. Often, these birds are nature spirits communicating with you.

The blackbird, that in the Celtic Otherworld myths becomes a rainbow bird, says, Hey, be brave and you will shine. Persistent Grandfather Crow, traditional messenger of the Native American and Norse world, asks, How many warnings do you need? Stop, be still, listen, observe, and the answers are in nature for you.

You too can use the air spirits in bird form to carry wishes for peace and harmony in a troubled world.

• Hold a container of birdseed, face each of the four directions, and say this adapted version of the Druid prayer I use when working with my local air spirits on the Isle of Wight, a small, semirural island off the south coast of England: “May there be peace in the north, peace in the east, peace in the south, and peace in the west. You spirits of the air, carry from this land peace throughout the whole world.”
• If you wish, add, “and may there be peace within me,” for if we are not at peace with ourselves, how can we bring harmony to others?
• Feed the birds with the seeds.

Rediscovering Local Fey Legends

Though the vast majority of formal research on faery beings has been recorded in Celtic, European, and Scandinavian countries, there will be nature spirits indigenous to the land wherever you live, even in a city. These indigenous nature spirits have been in the area for hundreds or even thousands of years. They have old stories about their origins and characteristics that reflect the terrain, and these secrets can be discovered by talking to locals or searching guide books for legends.

If you do live in or spend time in a country where nature still runs free, such as the vast tracts of the Australian outback or the open plains of the United States, indigenous spirits will still be a major focus. As such, regardless of your own land ancestry, it is vital you understand, respect, and work with these rooted local energies.

I have used a number of examples from France because this is an area where I have stayed and researched extensively for twenty-five years, beginning when my now-grown children were tiny and ran with the faeries. France is, along with Ireland, probably the richest source of recorded fey myth.

Rock Spirit Myths

Local legends on nature spirits are frequently focused around names such as “Giant’s Rock” or the “Hill of the Faeries.” Some fey stories are hidden behind Christian myths; often, locals will know of these older versions, so take time to talk in the cafés and bars. For example, there are a number of La Rigole du Diable, which means “the trough of the devil,” giant rock formations in central France. Though they are natural, the rocks may be in a relatively flat landscape and so are believed to have been hurled by an angry giant or demonic nature spirit. I have written about nasty nature spirits in chapter 9. Look closely at the rocks and you will see natural sculptures of the ancient guardian spirits who manifest in their rocks.

For example, the huge rock formation I visited at Royère de Vassivière in the Limousin region of La Creuse in France was, according to Christian accounts, the site where the local parish priest Camille was threatened that the devil’s gargoyles and little red devils would cause huge rocks and water to fall, blocking the valley of Thaurian. Camille managed to defeat the devil by getting his cockerel to crow before the devil’s, so the road is clear except for the odd passing tractor.1

There is a very clear, apparently demonic face naturally etched in the huge granite rocks, and the Christian devil is based on the ancient antlered animal spirits who were once worshipped as deities. A saint or priest is usually credited with overcoming evil forces and bad luck at one of these powerful sites, especially in a land such France where organised religion is very dominant. The French Christian legend may have been a way of explaining the natural rock sculpture of a rock guardian and next to it what appears to be a hooded man or woman in the rocks, possibly Camille or in the older tradition a second guardian of the place. Both figures are entirely untouched by human hand. In pre-Christian times, offerings were left for the guardians by locals at seasonal change points and the sites of ceremonies—the very same rock formations in the Christian legends. The offerings were left to ensure that the powerful rock guardian spirit granted their blessings on crops and cattle.

In some rural places, the fey associations have survived unaltered. At Saint-Yrieix-les-Bois, not far from Peyrabout in the Limousin region of La Creuse in Central France, the village of Beaumont is dominated by a hill whose summit is crowned by a natural pile of rocks, called locally the “Castle of the Faeries.” Here are rock pools where tributes have been left to the fey from time immemorial. At the foot of the hill in Beaumont village square is a fountain. When the vapours rising from the fountain appear above the trees, people say the faeries are doing their laundry. Peyrabout means “standing stones,” and megaliths were traditionally built along ley lines that are associated with frequent nature spirit appearances.2

Reawakening and Recording the Old Legends

In the modern, changing world, it is important to rediscover and record forgotten or overwritten nature essence legends, for they are etched in the land. All legends were created by people who tried to explain the energies of the spirits they detected in a place, but it is a dying art. One of the purposes of this book is to encourage you to psychically tune back into the stories of the land and its spirits and record them digitally for future generations.

This is especially important if your local fey-named places are built over with new development as has happened with many sacred springs and wells. If you are on holiday in a region you know and love well, you can link into their indigenous traditions using the same methods used for your home territory; for me, France is such a place.

Pendulum Fey Legends

It is much easier to tune in to the nature spirit legends in a place that is unspoiled. However, always ask before taking a picture of a fey place or sitting and recreating the old stories. Sometimes the spirits may not want to be recorded. While walking in the woods near the devil’s rocks described above, I was trying to take a picture of a lovely faery door in a rock about halfway up the rock formation at the side of the path. Suddenly, a stick flew upwards from the ground, smacked my camera arm and rather less poetically my bra twanged and unfastened. I did not take the picture.

Where legends are lost or never recorded, psychic recreation will bridge any gaps and open totally lost stories, stored in time warps. We all have the power of the storyteller within us, so trust yourself.

• Take a pendulum or use your hands and stand in a forest at the top of a hill or by rocks with a fey, religious, or mystical name.
• Stand near the rock face or perch near a particular natural stone etching; the features may not be so distinguishable up close. Otherwise, face a magnificent tree or the edge of a body of water or spring.
• Hold the pendulum in your dominant hand; if it is too windy, extend your hands so your palms are vertical, half an extended arm span from your body.
• Keep your fingers close together and slightly curved inwards to activate your palm and fingertip energy centres. Some people always prefer to use their hands. Either way, you are connecting your own aura or energy field with the energy field of the place that contains the energies of nature essences and old legends that have been woven around the place over time.
• Ask the guardian of the place that you may be given the fey story you are to pass on to future generations.
• You will feel a tingling in your hands or the pendulum will spiral as it is caught up in the flow of the time tunnel.
• You will hear in your mind or externally in bird calls or rustling leaves the overwhelming chatter, colours, and sounds as the events and essences of the place and human intervention caught up in the stories are released into your energy field.
• This is the same sensation you will experience when you are working with the nature essences of land where indigenous spirits mingle with a strong indigenous tradition (see later in this chapter).
• If you allow all these sensations to whirl and swirl around you, gradually one particular story or impression will predominate. Gradually you may hear a soft voice stilling the other sounds internal and external, telling you the story as though to a child. The voice belongs to the story keeper spirit of the place, as old as time, and she can be heard whenever you connect to ancient prerecorded or forgotten traditions.
• When the story ends, sit in a comfortable place and take up your fey journal. I will describe later in this chapter how to make your fey journal. Allow your hand to write or sketch images spontaneously. Even if you are not normally a writer or artist, the inspiration will flow very naturally. When you are finished, close your book and thank the story keeper and the guardians of the place.
• Before you leave, take some digital camera images, especially those that capture faces and figures in trees or stones.
• Try to pass on the legends within your family and friends and online, or collect together a new book of local legends including ones that are already known. We are the storytellers of tomorrow.

Working with Indigenous Nature Spirits in Situ

Some spirits are naturally rooted in the land and have been so for thousands of years, but they will relate with and even assist respectful visitors or those who have settled on the land.

Take the Mimi, or Mimih, rock spirits who have been recorded in early Australian Aboriginal rock-shelter art. These rock spirits are said to be older than the art, which itself dates back forty thousand years. Mimi are accepted by the Aboriginal people as totally natural and as objectively real as humans. For central to Aboriginal spirituality is the interconnectedness of all life and the spiritual and material worlds are one and the same. If a tree is cut down, the man or woman shares its pain.

Though Mimi are portrayed in and associated with the rocky escarpments of western Arnhem Land and are described in the folklore of the indigenous people of northern Australia they have been seen all over this vast continent. Mimi are described as living in family groups, having extremely thin and elongated bodies, and are naked with big heads and hair. They usually spend most of their time living in rock crevices. They are said to have taught the early people how to hunt, prepare kangaroo meat for food, and use fire.

Mimi resemble small imps. Because they are so fragile, they rarely go out if it is windy. Generally shy of humans, they will hide in rock crevices or if there are no suitable hiding places they have the power to open rocks and seal them once inside. However, though tiny, Mimi can be perceived as larger and have been helpful to people in distress. In the previous chapter, I described how when Gary was twenty-four he was missing in the outback for eleven days and the little brown beings ran about him chasing the bark and tucking the pieces all about him to keep him warm until he was found.

African Spirits Who Traveled to the Americas

Simbi, Central African water spirits, were first reported in the South Carolina low country by a geologist in search of marl deposits in 1843.3 They were associated with the hardships of African slaves who were illegally transported from ports in West Central Africa to the plantations, a trade that began over one hundred years earlier. Simbi spirits were both feared and regarded as protectors of the people they accompanied from Africa. They came with the slaves as guardians of the local American water springs. Because one in three slave children died before their sixteenth birthday, many as small infants, the people certainly needed protection. A story is told of an unnamed elderly slave who persuaded a planter not to enclose a spring for fear of angering the Simbi spirits. Bisimbi (the plural of Simbi), the term used among the original African Kikongo speakers, are called cymbees in Carolina and have survived in modern folklore, especially among those of African descent.

It was believed if the Simbi spirits were offended, the springs would dry up. In earlier times in Africa, they brought good hunting as well as harvests and this belief was transferred to the slaves’ small Sunday gardens and their hunting of small animals and birds, as this helped them to not starve. However, in a more sinister way, Simbi spirits were blamed for the disappearance of young women who went to fetch water, and for children drowning. If angered, they could also stir up high winds. Shrines to them were set up at the springs and rituals followed by the African people to ensure their positive blessings. The Simbi spirits were described as humanlike, each with unique features, according to the water source.

Das Michael Brown, a researcher at Dillard University in New Orleans, has studied Simbi spirits extensively.4 He reports that “connections made by West-Central Africans of ancestors with nature spirits suggest that territorial deities represented elders of the Other World. Their presence allowed those who lacked ties with named ancestors or who may have come to a region as strangers to still have access to agents of Other Worldly powers and to feel attached to the land (South Carolina) where they (now) lived.”

Indigenous American Spirits

There are numerous indigenous Native American spirits. Some, like the Gans, have passed into local hunting folklore of the settlers and travelers asked them for protection, though at first they were feared as demons. These mountain spirits of the Apache Indian nation are invoked in dance, song, and night rituals by their own people for safe journeys, good weather, luck, and protection from evil spirits. They guard the mountains of southwest North America. The Gans are traditionally considered important in Apache rituals for rites of passage, healing, and rain. Warriors imitate the spirits wearing body paint; tall, wooden, slat headdresses; and black masks specifically in the Crown Dance or Mountain Spirit Dance.

The Nunnehi fey people of old Cherokee County were said to be invisible unless they wanted to be seen, when they would take on an ordinary appearance. Great musicians and drummers, it is said to have been impossible to follow their sound which moves ever further away. They would rescue lost travelers and were believed to live in underground townhouses, marked on the surface by a hole like a chimney from which warm vapours would rise. Though many Nunnehi spirits traveled with the Native Americans on their eight-hundred-mile Trail of Tears to Oklahoma in 1835, others remained with the Cherokee people who hid in the hills and were later granted land in modern Cherokee county. Therefore, the Nunnehi also still protect their original homelands in North Carolina. It is said that if one were to find a lost tool or knife in this area, it is important to leave tobacco, beads, or another offering in exchange and ask permission to take the finding.

Other Native American spirits include the Algonquian star people who live in the sky and can cast spells on humans unless they are given offerings.

Connecting with Indigenous
and Migrant Nature Spirits in Situ

In the Treasury of Faery Wisdom in the appendix, I have described faery rings and other places traditionally associated with the fey. It is not generally considered wise to work within a circle of mushrooms or toadstools, though you can walk nine times around the outside and cast an offering into the centre while making a wish nine times.

Some areas are known for fey circles, for example the discs of completely bare sandy soil that vary in size from two to ten metres in diameter. These are found exclusively along the western coastal fringes of the Namib Desert in southern Africa. These are easily distinguishable because they are bare in the middle, yet have unusually lush perimeters of tall grasses which stand out from the otherwise sparse vegetation of the desert. These fey circles have defied scientific explanation.5

Generally, however, faery places tend to be a single clearing in woodland or a natural circle where there is only a little grass in an otherwise lush meadow. You will find your own naturally occurring faery places and may locate different ones in your vicinity when working with different kinds of faeries, for example a flat, grassed area on a rocky outcrop on a hillside for air spirits. In these faery spots, you will sense a number of different but related energies that suggest there is a fey community.

In time, you will discover one or two favourite locations close to home for your private meditations or rituals, but remember after any ritual you should always leave only your footprints and natural offerings.

Discovering Your Personal Faery Name

In your own location, you can work with the indigenous fey as well as any fey associated with your root culture however distant back and those associated go. For example, the large number of Scottish and Irish people in West Virginia that have given rise to numerous banshee sightings (see chapter 4 for more on banshees).

Just as when you were recreating legends, at first you may have felt overwhelmed by impressions, colours and sounds, so as you tune into your local fey you may find the chattering of the different fey groups confusing, especially if indigenous and settler faeries are still squabbling over territory.

As you meditate or sit quietly on the ground in your chosen fey space, hold your pendulum or hold both palms downward. You may not only connect with the different fey nations, but on the first or second occasion you should be given your secret fey name by the ruling nature spirit of the place. This is the name by which they will call you.

The name you are given will suddenly come into your mind or you will hear it on the breeze. It can be used at the beginning of any fey magick ritual or empowerment. It might be the name of a flower, herb, tree, star, a favourite crystal or a mythical faery name, perhaps associated with one of the pre-Christian gods or goddesses.

Hayley, who lives in Buckinghamshire, not far from London, explained how she received her magical name. “I was following a guided meditation when I saw a little fey flitting with me throughout the journey. Toward the end she called me ‘Clionda,’ then there were three faeries and I was presented with a willow headpiece and wrapped in a silken cloth.”

Clionda, a downsized-Celtic goddess, is the golden-haired faery queen of the seashore who still rules over every ninth wave. She is said to heal the sick with her magical birds (see chapter 4 for more of her story).

A Meditation to Meet and Greet the Spirits of the Place

• Sit in a local place of beauty or quiet woodland on a calm day, early in the morning or in the early evening when even a city will be relatively quiet. Urban wildlife gardens are excellent for fey connection as are botanical gardens, not in an exotic part of the garden but one dedicated to local flora. At other times, botanical gardens and hothouses will also enable you to experience the fey of the lands of their origins, though of course your indigenous faeries will not let the incomers have it all their own way. If you do not already know the history of you area, research any major migrations into your area from overseas as well as your own ancestral roots if your family has not always lived in the same area.
• Find a comfortable seat and hold your pendulum in your dominant hand.
• Hold your hands so the palms are facing downward and you feel comfortable and relaxed. You are using your pendulum or hands as an aerial to amplify the fey impressions.
• Close your eyes and breathe very gently and slowly through your nose and out again so that one breath follows another in an unbroken stream.
• Visualise two beautiful, shimmering faeries resting, one on each foot, small as butterflies with translucent wings.
• Hold your feet as still as you can. Gently inhale; as the faeries rise, relax and exhale.
• See the faeries next on your knees. Again, hold your knees motionless so as not to disturb them as you breath. Exhale gently and slowly as they are in the air again.
• Continue as they land together on your navel, then separately on your hands, separately on each breast, together on the throat, separately on each shoulder, together at the top of the spine, and finally side by side on the crown of your head.
• Allow them to move down again stage by stage to your feet and finally to fly off.
• Half open your eyes slowly. Put your free hand as a cup around the pendulum so that it is not quite touching but encloses the pendulum. Alternatively bring your hands close together so the palms are facing each other, vertically inwards close to your lap, in a prayer position, but not touching.
• Move your hands slowly to and fro so they almost touch to build up the energies between them.
• Close your eyes once more. Focus on the actual place you are sitting, but ask to be shown the land as it was long ago. Allow a picture to come spontaneously to tune into the original land spirits. You may be surprised, as it could once have been covered in water or a dense forest.
• Wait without expectation and indigenous nature beings will fly, run, or perhaps float towards you.
• Do not force the impressions, but greet the original spirits of the land and ask them to bless you. Promise you will always do your best to respect the land and create beauty.
• When they fade, move forward in your mind, counting slowly one hundred years at a time. You will see other spirits perhaps belonging to different settlers, one following another effortlessly on your part.
• Again, greet each new spirit or groups of spirits, ask for blessings, and promise to respect the land.
• If your own ancestors came to the land generations ago, you will likely connect with their spirits during your meditation. If you are the first to move here from another region, ask your own spirit guardians of your homeland to reveal themselves last of all and again ask for blessings and promise to preserve the heritage.
• With your eyes still closed, say, “I return to the present. Show me yourselves, wise spirits of the past who still are here and ever will be.”
• Now you will become aware of all the different generations and nations of fey people who coexist in an area; you will probably be surprised about how many there are.
• Just one fey will move forward, the fey person with whom you have most affinity. This fey person could be an indigenous spirit or one from your root culture. You can always call this particular spirit while you are in the area. The spirit may reveal their name or you may just know it instinctively. To your surprise, it may be the guide who appeared in the meditation when you first visited faeryland in chapter 1.
• Your spirit may call you by your new, secret name you discovered in the previous exercise and he or she may have a message for you. Afterward, thank your special spirit and the guardians of the place.
• Open your eyes slowly and you may still see the fey gathered around and your special guardian.
• Wait until they fade and record all you have seen and heard in your fey journal.
• As an offering, do something to improve the immediate location, for example removing choking weeds from a sapling, picking up litter, or clearing a blocked stream.

Making and Keeping a Fey Journal

Your fey journal can be created in any form you wish, and it can be written in as extensively with as much or little detail as you choose. Some people record special nature spirit experiences on holiday and photographs of beautiful natural landscapes with fey associations. Others use it as an ongoing resource book with detailed lists of nature spirits and relevant herbs or flowers with which they are linked.

• Your fey journal can act as an ongoing diary of your discoveries and interactions with nature spirits throughout your lifetime. Begin with experiences with faeries or nature spirits from your childhood. If you have children or grandchildren, write down their magical sayings, dreams, and visions. Too often, the details become blurred in everyday living.
• One day, you may choose to pass on your book as a legacy to a special child, grandchild or friend, publish parts of it or deposit it in an archive to help future research into nature spirits and to help keep the old knowledge and ways alive.
• There is no substitute for a handwritten fey journal. Black ink on white or cream paper is customary, though you may prefer green ink. When outdoors, use a ballpoint pen, but a fountain pen is best for special work. You can sometimes buy plant-based inks.
• With a handwritten journal, sit among nature and record precious moments, fey experiences, and impressions in situ, perhaps adding pressed flowers or leaves from the fey site. Add a date and location, as it is all too easy to confuse sites particularly if you are sightseeing.
• Have a waterproof pouch for carrying your journal. Digital tablets, while convenient, are nowhere near as magical and you do not want emails bleeping through to irritate the faeries and spoil a moment.
• A loose-leaf version with separate sheets of paper that slip into a leather book cover is ideal. Date notebooks as they become full. List the contents and file safely. You have the option of copying the most relevant parts into a particularly beautiful blank-paged notebook with a faery or natural scene on the front.
• Illustrate your journal with drawings, paintings, and digital-camera images of magical places you visit; close-ups of fey flowers and crystals; as well as images of your fey indoor and outdoor place (see the Introduction) in moonlight, sunlight, and in different seasons.
• If you photograph a tree, you may notice a faery door or gnome recorded on the image afterward. Waterfalls may be dancing with water spirits not visible to the human eye.
• Keep an even smaller notebook with you for noting information about any unusual plants or herbs you see in a faery place whenever you have a day out, a weekend away, or holiday. Take pictures of them so you can identify them later.
• Scribble down legends of faery wells, ancient sites, local rhymes, chants, and any relevant information on sign boards. Take an image of the signs you see.
• Most significantly, spontaneously write your impressions of the fey spirits you encounter, drawing quick images and noting colours. A box of watercolour pencils is a useful tool.
• Though you may recognise many of the nature spirits from those described in this book, the way you perceive a spirit may be totally unique and equally as valid as what others have reported. This is because of the diversity of spirits and because each of us makes a unique connection between our aura energy field and theirs.
• If you relax and let your hand write without conscious thought, using a psychic process called automatic writing, you can intuitively rediscover the original spirit who inhabited the glade.
• All kinds of unexpected people come out with fascinating information or experiences in shops or cafés near a sacred site. It is all too easy to forget details and not be able to trace the source if we do not scribble it down as it comes; a mobile phone voice recorder may inhibit the story eller, especially someone from a traditional society.
• In addition, begin a cuttings folder for interesting articles, postcards, or small pamphlets from places you visit. Pamphlets in visitor centres or even churches are valuable sources of information. If you file them, you can translate them at a later date if need be.
• Note also the titles, authors, and page references in any books on faeries or legends you read if there are any new or exciting facts or theories.
• There are many books and leaflets being self-published, especially reprints of old books originally written in Victorian times when fey research was at its height. These are pure treasures. Look also in old bookshops near fey sites for tattered old copies with sepia images.
• Have a special section in your fey journal for the legends and messages psychically communicated to you, as well as any poetry you are inspired to write.
• Start a folder on your computer for your most significant fey findings; a digital archive will allow you to find information quickly, and notebooks can get lost or damaged. Information stored on computer has the benefit of being easily edited and rearranged. It is worth backing up your work on a memory stick or portable hard drive so that you can create a cyber treasury of fey wisdom over the years, in spite of computer crashes and losses.
• The Internet will also give you a valuable source of fey information worldwide and you can get basic translator programs to give you the gist of material in other languages.
• You can also access on line reference material such as www.sacred-texts.com or www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/sacredtexts/index.html and find copies of out-of-print books online as well as information on local forums studying nature and earth energies.

In the next chapter we will work with the fey people who protect your home and family.

Chapter 2 Sources

1. http://www.educreuse23.ac-limoges.fr/monteil/rigole/legende/cure/3.htm
2. http://www.france-voyage.com/towns/saint-yrieix-les-bois-5773.htm
3. Orr, Bruce and Kayla. Ghosts of Berkeley County, South Carolina. Charleston: History Press, 2011.
4. http://www.mamiwata.com/simbi.html
5. Fairy Circles: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/wallpaper/photography/photos/mysterious-earth/desert-fairy-circles/

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